Enduring Friendships

“A good friend is a connection to life, a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world” (Lois Wyse)

I love this quote as it entirely encompasses a particular long distance friendship I have at the moment. I previously saw Mel several times a week, not because we had an intense relationship that obligated us to, but because we were equally crazy about the gym at that point in time. Every other day we would see each other at our most sweaty and unglamorous and initially exchanged polite niceties about the weather, traffic and other equally benign topics of conversation. Soon, each of our dry and cheeky sense of humours surfaced and the non-descript chats soon became hilariously filled (or so we thought) with sarcasm and inappropriate comments about our fellow gym members, aspirational 3 minute discussions about how we might make our 1st million pounds and a debate on the merits of mint chic chip v’s raspberry ripple ice cream. Deep and meaningful stuff.

But as life inevitably takes us on its meandering journey of highs and lows, we found that we were both looking forward to our quick, pre Circuits class 3 minute chat more and more to let off some steam about our day or week with a non-judgemental listener who only offered advice upon request and when provided was always succinct and to the point due to the aforementioned time pressure before the start of a session of sweat. Pretty soon, the 3 minutes were not enough and became cozy nights in with a few bottles of red putting the world to rights!

Mel then made announcement that she was transforming her life, giving up,work and moving to the far reaches of Scotland with her hubby to try something different from the daily grind. As I congratulated her, it was with more than a tinge of sadness that our girly cathartic sessions were coming to an end. But they weren’t in fact coming to an end, they were just going to change slightly. We still catch up fairly regularly over a glass of red and conduct a good degree of man bashing, updates on jobs/family dramas and so forth. The only difference now is that we’re no longer in the same room and Alexander Bells greatest invention is usually hot against my cheek as I rub the tears of laughter from my eyes as we catch up on the latest shenanigans we’ve each been up to.

I’ve certainly learned a great lesson from this experience in that there was no need to mourn the potential loss of a great mate, as true friendships really do endure, regardless of distance certainly. And my regular telephone catchups with Mel really do keep me sane in this crazy world! Looking forward to my next glass of red wine with you my lovely! X